[HN Gopher] How to make good small games
___________________________________________________________________
How to make good small games
Author : pmarin
Score : 220 points
Date : 2023-04-19 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (farawaytimes.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (farawaytimes.blogspot.com)
| murphm8 wrote:
| An excellent game where the designer/programmer doesn't let
| things get in the way of building is Aurora 4x [1] (not really a
| small game anymore). Only runs on windows, doesn't even have
| modifiable window sizes. For users that have period separators
| instead of commas a bunch of the text is cut off. It's a
| fantastic game that is purely what the creator wants and plays
| and is nothing more, and it has a great community behind it. It
| is purely a work of passion by the creator.
|
| [1] https://aurora2.pentarch.org/
| lagniappe wrote:
| I made a pretty cool semi-idle game recently, in the spirit of
| Progress Quest. It's called "Console Quest" and runs from the
| terminal.
|
| It's a simple RPG where your characters fights monsters and
| completes quest achievements without your input, but you get
| randomized chances to visit the merchant or medic, which largely
| determines your fate. It seems simple at first but it's harder
| than it seems as the game moves on.
|
| https://github.com/donuts-are-good/consolequest
|
| I made it just for fun one night, and found it strangely
| addictive all on my own while testing because I'd want to keep
| playing even after verifying the thing I was testing.
|
| P.s. my high score is 356 days in game. not sure it's possible to
| get higher, you get wiped out quick.
|
| It'd be my pleasure if anybody wants to play :)
| mrec wrote:
| _" I can tell you "scope small uwu", but if you don't believe
| small games can be good in the first place, all you'll hear is a
| homework assignment you have to do before you can make the games
| you really care about."_
|
| This is both an important insight and excellent writing.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| The other outcome of this attitude of "make small games" is
| everyone just makes platformers.
|
| Don't get me wrong, a platformer is a good small game project
| to start with, the game can be made with a level or two in a
| weekend using modern tools.
|
| But even back on the NES we had way more than just platformers.
|
| Sure, a beat-em-up is a bit more technically challenging than a
| platformer but I think cloning a Turtles game from the NES era
| is probably a fairly reasonable "small game" too.
|
| Or cloning an RPG, or something like Fire Emblem, or Zelda.
|
| It's weird how everyone wants to make a metroidvania but not
| many Zelda-likes are out there.
| the_af wrote:
| > _The other outcome of this attitude of "make small games"
| is everyone just makes platformers._
|
| I don't think so. Remember the heyday of Flash games,
| Kongregate (before it was spammed by MMO clones or whatnot)?
| Many short & sweet games that weren't platformers. Some were
| puzzle-solving games, some were adventure games, some were
| escape-the-room, some were shooters, and yes, some were
| platformers.
|
| I have the fondest memories from that era. I still remember
| the short and thoughtful "The Majesty of Colors".
| pizzaknife wrote:
| absolutely nothing has replaced Macromedia Flash. The
| security problems seem quaint these days (to solve).
| Nothing since Flash has offered the creative or the
| technical a comprehensive suite for both proficiencies
| while having an extremely low barrier to entry (barring the
| cost of the Macromedia IDE)
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| That's true, a lot of simple physics games like launching
| turtles and visual novel style games.
|
| That era was definitely defined by enthusiast creators
| instead of the modern indie-studio-ification of even the
| simplest games.
| the_af wrote:
| Right, lots a simple physics games, I forgot about that.
| Launch the turtle, destroy the castle, etc. Also some
| relatively interesting wargames. And some interesting
| experimentation.
|
| It was a golden age of enthusiast creators indeed.
| Browsing random games was very interesting (of course,
| lots of garbage, but Sturgeon's Law applies).
|
| Is itch.io sort of like that nowadays?
| koromak wrote:
| Also relevant: https://a327ex.com/posts/snkrx_log
|
| The developer talks specifically about choosing a small scope for
| a game, and clearly spends a lot of time thinking strategically
| about being an indie dev.
| koromak wrote:
| ACtually this was the link I was remembering, ignore the
| previous one
|
| https://a327ex.com/posts/lessons_second_game
| sdwr wrote:
| The SNKRX guy is a champ. Great posts, great game, opensourced
| the code. Real class act and top tier game designer.
|
| I started building something from his code -
| https://github.com/sdwr/underlod
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| For small games I really think it's easier to just use C++/SDL or
| whatever language and framework one is familiar with and go from
| there. A simple 2D RPG might be the most one can complete in a
| reasonable amount of time (say a few months) but once you have an
| engine you can "reproduce" quickly.
| shmerl wrote:
| I wouldn't call Umineko a small game by any means. It is very
| good.
|
| Unless screenshots were just for conveying the satisfaction
| point.
| Tepix wrote:
| Notch made many small games before he did Minecraft.
| empressplay wrote:
| My partner and I are developing a very-high level 3D dialect of
| Logo. It makes 3D game development MUCH easier because you can
| code from the perspective of turtles in 3D space.
|
| I've had a lot of fun developing a bunch of different games in
| it, and as more features / keywords are added, I get to write
| even more games! It's been a blast. We recently added physics
| capabilities to the turtles, and I'm working on using those for
| some new games.
|
| I have a 13-year old guinea pig I've been teaching how to code in
| Logo, and she loves how much she can do in so few keywords. She's
| recently started competently debugging her own code and I'm proud
| of that.
|
| https://turtlespaces.org (website)
| https://turtlespaces.org/weblogo (WASM IDE)
| tmountain wrote:
| Literally every time I've set out to make a game, I've let
| perfectionism get in the way. Some examples:
|
| - Spending all my time thinking about how to support 10 different
| resolutions
|
| - Coming up with the perfect framework for managing state
|
| - Working on silly menu systems and other UI elements
|
| - Finding the perfect map builder and obsessing over data
| representations
|
| - Tweaking an entity component system to death
|
| - Etc
|
| Next time I set out to make something, I'm not going to worry too
| much about the code. If the idea has merit, I'll refactor it
| later if I need to.
|
| Summary--It's really easy to let details get in the way of ideas.
| waboremo wrote:
| The important part to focus on here is "small". Any idea you
| have, shrink it. Make it 10x smaller. Create whatever that is.
|
| It's kind of the problem with games, they consist of so many
| fields it's easy to think you have a "small" idea only for that
| idea to actually be substantial. Then, reasonably, when you
| want to nail the details it becomes a gigantic mountain. To me
| this isn't perfectionism, everyone wants to nail details, but
| when the scope is too large it's difficult for that to happen -
| hell it's difficult for that to happen on teams of tens of
| thousands operating as cogs dedicated to their tiny section of
| work!
|
| Any one of your bullet points could have been the "small game"
| to demonstrate how large you're still operating.
| tmountain wrote:
| Exactly -- if I look at how much time I put into building
| "frameworks", I could probably have made a dozen small scale
| prototypes in the same timeframe.
| fullwaza wrote:
| You forgot:
|
| - Looking for the perfect domain name
| JohnFen wrote:
| I notice that none of the things in your list are actually
| about the game. Maybe reverse the order of things and do the
| game bits first?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I've been doing this a while now. I have a main foreverproject
| game I just toil away on for, well, forever. But I create
| dozens of mini games outside that foreverproject to experiment
| with ideas for the foreverproject.
|
| For me the foreverproject is where I drive all that perfection
| energy. The surrounding games, well, they're just "experiments"
| and "prototypes", right? Surely prototypes don't need to be
| perfect ;)
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I'm obsessed with other people's forever projects. Have you
| written up the "grand idea" in a blog post or anything? Love
| to hear more.
|
| I'm trying to break my own BIG IDEA into manageable
| experiments or profitable side hustles somehow too.
| [deleted]
| precompute wrote:
| This is the way to go. Just remember to market yourself by
| your "experiments" and "prototypes".
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Is your forever project public? Would be interesting to see
| what it is.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Unfortunately it isn't. I recently switched my forever
| project after working on the same one for a couple decades
| - it was a MUD (text multiplayer RPG).
|
| The playerbase dwindled to nothing and I wanted a different
| challenge so I shuttered it. Over the years many people
| worked on it and while I'm sure they wouldn't mind if I put
| it up on github, I've lost contact with many of them so I
| don't feel right releasing it, so it's just in the bitbin
| of history.
|
| Now I'm working on a 2D version of it, which adds a whole
| new dimension to the challenge. Once I have something more
| than just random prototypes I do plan on putting it up. But
| it's slow going - I have a job and kids, so I get about 1
| hour per day to work on it.
| telchior wrote:
| There's so much lost that was in MUDs, including a huge
| amount of good, descriptive writing of vast areas. I
| wonder if a later iteration of the Dall-E / Midjourney /
| Stable generators might be able to create visuals based
| off of rooms descriptions.
| dgb23 wrote:
| This happens to me with _any_ project if I don't:
|
| - set a clear time boundary and a date, typically by estimating
| chunks of the work, it's better to make wrong estimations than
| to yak shave the crap out of something for way too long
|
| - write down the goals and non-goals.
|
| - make a clear, simple high-level design, including trade-offs
| and cutting corners to meet the goals
|
| - implement vertically, get something going fast
|
| Stuff like that...
|
| Basically with an open ended, creative endeavor I absolutely
| need to restrict myself much as I can stomach. At least in
| cases where I actually _want_ to finish a project and know what
| its goals are. In many cases exploration and playing with code
| and techniques is the goal itself and that's OK.
| prakhar897 wrote:
| When I'm working on a game, I create an incredibly simple
| version and iterate from there. By simple, I mean just a box on
| a ground would be considered a first version. Next version,
| added movement. Next version, added lake etc......
|
| I also make sure it's default live so I can get continuos
| external feedback as well.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I design board games and have designed 30+ (one signed so far).
| I've come to the following conclusion about game design: It is
| sometimes a freaking slog! I always tell people to work on the
| design (or game part) they are most excited to work on.
| Maintaining momentum is key in my opinion. If one design or
| game part is blocking, set it to the side and let your
| subconscious work on it while you make progress elsewhere.
|
| There is another tenet from board game design to get the idea
| out of your head and onto the table. Showing designs to trusted
| others asap is imperative. Very much a "perfect is the enemy of
| good enough" situation.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If you have designed thirty, you might have some insight on a
| question which has vexed me: are there automated or semi-
| automated ways to look for "fairness" and playability and
| such? Any guidelines?
|
| I ask because I have a friend with a game idea that _looks_
| fun, but it has enough tweakable parameters that I could see
| a poor selection leading to unbalanced games, or a clever
| combo being difficult to beat, and so on.
| Kinrany wrote:
| A big selling point of most games is that they're new
| somehow, you don't yet know how to play them. A mere
| possibility of analysis like this would probably constrain
| games to a solvable genre.
|
| This works with patterns used to create games though. Few
| will play rock-paper-scissors a lot, but using it as a
| conflict resolution mechanic with known characteristics
| works great.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Well, balance is a very very funny thing. There are lots of
| board game design articles about it. A lot of designers
| will employ spreadsheet and Monte Carlo to achieve
| "balance".
|
| The thing is that players don't want actual balance; they
| want to _feel_ like it is balanced. And much more
| importantly, it must be FUN! If a game is too balanced it
| might well be boring and that is worse! My goal for balance
| is to try to make it so that players of equal skill and
| exposure to a game all have a reasonable chance of winning
| any game play.
|
| I do know of some designers who start with a perfectly
| balanced game so they have an anchor. Then they adjust it
| over play-testing sessions to be more fun or create the
| experience they are designing for. I have a game that is
| Dracula vs Van Helsing in a hidden movement chase. I _KNOW_
| that Dracula has a 60 /40 advantage. However, during
| unattended play-testing (random people are just given the
| game and rulebook and I'm not there), players
| overwhelmingly reported feeling that Van Helsing was far
| too strong!! Perception is everything.
|
| As for your friend, they should look at having it played
| during a Protospiel or Unpub event. Some are in person but
| there are others online. They will get immeasurable
| feedback to direct their design. They are also innumerable
| podcasts that discuss these topic like Ludology and
| Discords like Building the Game and Break My Game they
| could join to get more feedback and advice.
|
| As for random set ups creating unbalanced games, that can
| sometimes be even the _desired_ effect. It depends a lot of
| the type of game, length of game and target audience. For
| example, Uno is completely random and unbalanced in terms
| of game decisions. However, the point of the game is to
| allow kids to _beat_ their parents while learning matching.
| It is a 15 minute game so you just play again and move on
| with life. The memories and excitement are the desired game
| experience, who cares about balance?
| komadori wrote:
| Ultimately, only ample real-world play-testing can answer
| these questions from a human perspective.
|
| I share your concern though. You don't want to publish a
| game only to find, when attacked by real players in
| quantity, that your design is broken.
|
| For the board game I'm working on, I've found running many
| simulated games with MCTS-based AI players has proved
| instructive in some respects. For example, balancing for
| turn-order fairness.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| A practice I find useful is to have a few projects going that
| are in different stages. So maybe one you're still
| planning/dreaming up, one in the core execution phase, and
| one that just needs finishing touches. That way you can
| switch not just between subjects but between modes of working
| to give your mind a chance to refresh.
| dxuh wrote:
| You should try making game jam games, if you haven't yet. It
| really teaches you to ignore things that are not absolutely
| essential. And all the stuff you have listed are good
| candidates for post-jam bugfix versions, so you don't ignore
| the more important things either.
| tmountain wrote:
| Good suggestion -- there's a hard constraint (time). That
| becomes a forcing function for decision making.
| fodi wrote:
| This. The best thing about game jams is that you'll better at
| the next one. You'll learn to focus, not to overshoot the
| scope, manage your time better and do quick iterations. I've
| done a few on Itch and the community is really friendly,
| which provides enough drive for me to submit before the
| deadline even if the result is quite wonky. If you rate other
| people's games, they'll probably rate you back, which is
| great.
|
| One particular game jam I recommend is Trijam [1]. It takes
| place every weekend, has a fixed theme and ideally you should
| only spend a total of 3 hours on a game which forces you to
| do something relatively simple.
|
| [1] https://trijam.itch.io/
| pengaru wrote:
| That's not perfectionism, it's failure to prioritize and
| manage/prevent scope creep.
|
| Unless you already have a playable game loop that's so fun it's
| hard to put down, you shouldn't be going anywhere near menu
| systems.
|
| You should have what's basically a rickety CLI-invoked
| developer mode test harness, where the binary immediately
| enters a playable thing. Only once that is proven as something
| worth putting a menu system in front of should you even think
| about that.
|
| Most game ideas suck when implemented so they're a total loss,
| or require a lot of iterating into something entirely different
| from what you imagined. So the top priority should be implement
| the game loop of your idea, learn if it sucks ASAP, then maybe
| try mutate it into something a person can't easily walk away
| from if you sit them down in front of it, or just cut your
| losses and do something else entirely.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Sounds like perfectionism to me. Why do you insist it's not?
| Nothing you said seems in disagreement with what he said.
| badpun wrote:
| That's not perfectionism, that's something else. Building
| out menu systems before you even have the core game loop
| locked down is basically like building out a house before
| you know on which plot of land it should be built.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| But how does that make it not perfectionism? Having the
| wrong priorities is in no way inconsistent with
| perfectionism.
|
| I also don't think that analogy works because the things
| he mentioned mostly do need to be touched to develop the
| core game loop. The problem he has is that once he
| touches something he can't leave it dirty. That's the way
| in which it's perfectionism.
| pengaru wrote:
| > But how does that make it not perfectionism? Having the
| wrong priorities is in no way inconsistent with
| perfectionism.
|
| It's not perfectionism because you can't even succeed at
| making the perfect part without more of the whole
| defining what perfect even looks like. The requirements
| evolve/emerge as the whole does.
|
| It's just misguided premature effort, but there's a very
| strong force driving this mistake - it's easier and more
| fun to trim the sails than build the rest of the ship.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's not perfectionism that prevents people from reaching
| what's, by reasonable standards, a finish line. It's a
| failure to prioritize.
|
| It's perfectionism that prevents people from shipping
| what's by reasonable standards already past the finish
| line, because they keep redoing and polishing "good enough"
| things, ad infinitum.
|
| Perfectionism can be a good thing producing exceptional
| quality results, provided you've prioritized appropriately
| and are playing "perfectionist" iterating in diminishing
| returns land.
|
| With or without perfectionism, if you can't prioritize
| correctly, you'll likely fail to finish.
|
| Perfectionism causes people to over-finish and endlessly
| defer shipping.
| pengaru wrote:
| Replying to myself as it's too late to edit.
|
| A more succinct explanation came to mind while just doing
| some yard work:
|
| We've all heard and understood the wisdom of "premature
| optimization is the root of all evil", right?
|
| What's being conflated here as perfectionism is a variant
| of premature optimization.
|
| Perhaps we need a variant like "Premature polishing is
| the root of all unfinished games".
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I think we have different understandings of
| perfectionism. I don't think perfectionism means you do
| something perfectly. Most of the time I think it's not
| being able to trade good enough for best. Often this
| leads to unfinished work. Perfectionism by no means only
| comes into play after you have something shippable -
| you'd likely never get that far.
| pengaru wrote:
| Development of _anything_ substantial is an incremental
| process where parts _must_ exist in an unfinished
| imperfect state for a time. Managing those priorities and
| letting parts exist as scaffolding and /or barely working
| stand-ins is a core competency of our field. e.g. You're
| not a perfectionist when you used expensive artist-
| produced "perfect" stand-in art instead of programmer
| art, you're just incompetent and wasting resources on
| stuff that won't likely make it into the shipped product.
|
| I've seen many "perfectionists" hide behind this moniker
| when infact they're just incompetent when it comes to
| prioritizing what to do, how much to do it, and in what
| order.
|
| You're not a perfectionist when you spent all your time
| making a perfect ECS at the expense of actually
| completing a playable game, when the latter was your
| actual goal. You're just a failure/incompetent. But
| "perfectionist" certainly sounds better for the ego.
| tejohnso wrote:
| I think it's useful to aim for learning. I built a small game
| that runs on Android, Android TV, and Linux just to get more C++
| exposure. I'm not sure if it's "good", but it's definitely small.
| And good enough that my child actually wants to play it, and even
| better, suggests improvements.
| the_only_law wrote:
| What makes a game "big" or "small" in this case?
|
| I'm wondering, because I was going through my steam library after
| reading this, just looking at the games I play and trying to fit
| them into "small" and "big" and while many seemed obvious, many
| were also hard to tell.
|
| Is it the size/scale of the development (i.e. indie vs AAA)? The
| mechanical complexity? the graphical complexity? The volume of
| content? The size on disk? maybe some combination or something
| else entirely.
| CBarkleyU wrote:
| > The mechanical complexity? the graphical complexity? The
| volume of content?
|
| Yes, yes and yes.
|
| > The size on disk?
|
| Indirectly, sometimes. Also, how polished a game is.
|
| At the end of the day, people severely underestimate the last
| 10% -- which take about 3-30 times as long as the first 90% --
| of creating a game. Creating a bare minimum Binding of Isaac
| clone can be done in 48 hours. Creating a full sized Binding of
| Isaac competitor will take at least a year of full time work of
| someone who knows what they're doing.
| dxuh wrote:
| I truly do believe that small games can be good. I know plenty of
| small games and pretty much the only games I have really loved in
| the last few years are small. But I don't agree with "A game's
| quality is independent from its scale". I actually think making a
| small game good is much harder. If you have fewer dials to tweak,
| it's harder to come up with a configuration you haven't seen a
| dozen times already. Especially not one that works. Most of the
| ideas that I want to work on are larger games, because I don't
| have any ideas for small games that I imagine to be good. I wish
| I had them. I have made a bunch of games and also many game jam
| games (i.e. smaller games - maybe 15+? - see here:
| https://theshoemaker.de/projects), but I think none of them are
| actually good. Nothing like the tiny games other people have
| made, that I adore. That is a level of mastery I have simply not
| reached (yet?). Of course I am aware that I can just try more
| things, because the stakes are lower, but you need a critical
| amount of falling-in-love with an idea to even start and all the
| ideas I do fall in love with are for larger games.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I thought this was a good write up on why to make a small game
| and how to conceptualize your process, and some technical advice.
| I was sorta hoping it would be more "I've accepted I want to make
| a small game. How do I make a good game?" As someone who likes
| the idea of making small games, I don't know the discipline and I
| know there must be. Writing excellent software has a variety of
| specific ways of thinking about software and it's implementation,
| how to organize ideas, what parts to not forget to plan our
| carefully up front and what to discover in the doing, etc.
| Caitlynmeeks wrote:
| Very well written. I really dig this. Thanks!
| aschearer wrote:
| Something I've struggled with and have seen often is engineer-
| types drawn to game development who lose themselves in code,
| tech, and getting it "just right." It's super important to be
| clear about _why_ you makes games. If it's just to blow steam
| after a long day slinging JavaScript or to dabble with new
| technology be honest about it -- you'll spare yourself pain
| later. If you really want to _make_ games remember the aphorism,
| "real artists ship."
|
| On the subject of scope, I think it's helpful to remember the
| Mythical Man Month. If the game you're cribbing took four experts
| two years to create, that's eight person-years. Can one person
| hope to make something of that scale? There are examples, but few
| have that level of resolve.
|
| Don't hand wave away things by saying "modern game engines."
| People were brilliant back then, and expectations were lower in
| some respects.
| vgel wrote:
| I think a lot of it is what types of games or genres you're
| interested in. Certain games / genres of games work _better_ as
| small games than others.
|
| Like I've worked on a lot of small games (https://vgel.itch.io),
| some better, some worse, but I've never tried, e.g., an FPSRPG or
| a Dwarf Fortress-esque simRTS. The process of "stripping down"
| those genres to be feasible as a small game _fundamentally
| transforms them_ into something else. When you rip the complex
| skill tree out of an FPSRPG to simplify it, it becomes a
| different kind of game! And some people just don 't like that--
| they only want the complex game. They didn't like early
| Minecraft, they only like Minecraft now, after 10+ years of
| development gave tons of interlocking features and mechanics. And
| that's... what it is. It makes me a little sad, but I don't think
| those people will be very happy as solo indie devs (unless they
| have the superhuman willpower to push through years of
| development on a single game without enjoying the early stages or
| the tight feedback loop of improvement you get by releasing
| smaller games).
|
| I've tried to sell this vision to people before, maybe not as
| eloquently as OP, showed them Itch.io and some of my favorite
| games on there, and... they just didn't care. It didn't interest
| them at all. Other people got the appeal immediately. It just
| seems to come down to personal taste.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You can't just toil away blindly until suddenly a complex game
| pops out. You need to start with the small game and add layers.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I appreciate your advice, but from a general viewpoint, just
| adding layers doesn't necessarily lead to interesting
| complexity.
|
| StarCraft Broodwar is an interestingly complex strategy game,
| not because it has a lot of layers, or even lots of things at
| all, but because it has a simple system of orthogonal,
| powerful features. It had less features and units than many
| of its competitors (RTS was a big genre at the time), but it
| found ingenuity in simplicity, minimalism. Every piece of the
| puzzle was to some degree relevant throughout the history of
| the game.
|
| I think you are right in a general sense, but "layers" can be
| a misleading term here. You rather want to increase
| complexity and beauty by enabling manners of composition.
|
| Another game that illustrates this is The Witness, which is
| probably one of the most praised puzzle games and again, is
| beautifully simple. In terms of layers it has pretty much
| exactly three: The panel puzzles, the environmental puzzles
| and then the visual secrets that you only see by looking at
| things in a certain way. But in terms of actual game
| mechanics there are very few things. The complexity then
| emerges by mere combination.
| vgel wrote:
| Yeah, exactly, but to _enjoy_ the small game at that point, I
| think you need to have an appreciation for small games. I
| guess it 's possible to enjoy a small game as only the core
| of an imagined larger game, but... it's not how I think about
| game development, at least.
| aio2 wrote:
| We often revolve around the result, not the process of getting
| to the result. That's why many don't care.
| luqtas wrote:
| > They didn't like early Minecraft, they only like Minecraft
| now, after 10+ years of development gave tons of interlocking
| features and mechanics.
|
| i think you are dead wrong. there is a lot of people just using
| the core of the game (previous the first alpha) to build stuff
| and that is just fine for them. past alpha (the survival mode)
| up to today i do not think it changed dramatically beyond some
| mobs and new stuff to find... the gameplay is still the same:
| collect -> craft [while surviving]
| vgel wrote:
| Some people, yeah. But a lot of people only enjoy the game
| because of complex systems that were added later: redstone,
| slimeblock machines, building complex farms, gear progression
| via material and enchantment upgrades, exploring an infinite
| world, etc. You can go on Youtube and see people who _only_
| play those parts of the game. I think it 's fair to say that
| they wouldn't have enjoyed, say, Indev, before those features
| were added. And Indev, before the infinite world, was already
| the culmination of 6 months of work on the game! That's
| pushing the definition of "small game" already, and a lot of
| people would still treat it as "a cool toy, but not a full
| game" (I played it back then and remember people talking
| about it as such).
| luqtas wrote:
| redstones were introduced at the alpha version of the game.
| complex enough to people build small computers with it back
| in the days. as mob and food farms, with lots of ways to
| automate it with water buckets etc. enchantments are just
| grind. the 2 main weapons of the game, a sword and a bow
| were introduced at alpha stage too... and the infite world
| is also an alpha thing.
|
| sure nowadays you can build a lot of complex stuff. but i
| do not think Minecraft went through a metanoia. i remember
| tweaking with more complex systems of villagers with mods
| back in the alpha/beta days than when they were officially
| released...
|
| maybe now Minecraft is 'more popular' as every kid that has
| access to a computer with internet probably will hear about
| it and play. but maybe this popularity is more about 'we do
| not have much child friendly games' than any other
| phenomena. + the masterpiece of gameplay which it has!
| after you learn how to open the inventory, hold the L.mouse
| to collect resources and R.mouse to place blocks... life
| just gets brighter *-*
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| I think the biggest trap is that people imagine their games will
| be fun. And then as they build them they realize it's not. A lot
| of the fun was just their fantasy.
| probablypower wrote:
| I guess the great game developers/designers are those who can
| convert their imagined fantasy fun into shareable real fun
| through games. Not easy at all.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I imagine they just imagine fantasy fun in a more realistic
| way than other people. So they can iterate on it faster and
| reach the real thing.
|
| At least, this is the usual theme on people that are good on
| anything.
| reidrac wrote:
| My experience has been quite the opposite: after a while
| working on a game I think "is this any fun?", and turns out
| people likes them (even if sometimes I don't really get it).
| empressplay wrote:
| This really goes for any creative endeavour -- try writing a
| readable novel, or create a listenable track. Creating things
| other people actually want is HARD.
| williamthyer wrote:
| I feel like this advice applies to a lot more projects than just
| video games.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A lot of this is more or less "how to develop critical taste
| and apply it thoughtfully" which is no small thing and not easy
| to write about well for any medium.
|
| It's extra relevant in gaming too I think. Big games are very
| very expensive to make, and so are conservatively modeled on
| what works in other mediums like movies, tv, novels. Small
| games are where the real exploration of the dynamics and limits
| of the medium happens, but is held back because gamers overall
| have underdeveloped taste.
| kabdib wrote:
| I had a housemate who could make a cool game in an afternoon. He
| was a bottomless well of interesting ideas. He works in finance
| now :-)
|
| Anyway, his games were horrible messes of magical Peek and Poke
| statements in Atari BASIC. But . . . they were FUN. And they took
| a couple of hours to write.
| debacle wrote:
| If you enjoy small, self-contained games, obviously check out
| Vampire Survivors as a recent phenom, but SokPop collective on
| Itch and Steam puts out a new game each month and while many of
| them are barely passable, some are truly great, especially
| Stacklands which I think is their biggest hit, but a very
| short/small game overall.
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